The Enduring: Stories of Surviving the Apocalypse

by Nicholas Ryan

  “No. The measures were part of the school’s security in the advent of an ‘incident’.”

  “A shooting incident, for example?”

  “Yes, or something similar.”

  I thought about that for a long moment. I knew most schools had protocols and procedures for student safety in the event of such an occurrence, and suddenly I wondered if those measures had played a part in the safe evacuation of every student and teacher on the grounds during the fateful day the ‘Affliction’ had swept through South Lyon.

  I asked Jill.

  “It helped,” she admitted. “We were well prepared. The training each teacher had, and the safety measures that were part of the school’s policy certainly gave us direction. We each knew what we had to do – what was expected of us in a crisis that endangered the safety of the children in our care. I think, for that reason, the Army was able to evacuate us in an orderly fashion – they knew where to look, what to expect… and each of us knew how to react.”

  “What about in each classroom? Did you have a weapon…?”

  “No,” Jill laughed but it was a bitter, almost cruel sound that came from the back of her throat. “The school is a weapon free zone, so there were no guns around. However each classroom was equipped with an emergency bag. It was a red drawstring backpack that cinches at the top.”

  “What was in it?”

  Jill looked a little shamefaced for a moment. “You know… I can’t remember any more,” she confessed ruefully. “The bag sat on a filing cabinet in a corner behind my desk.”

  I let the subject slide. We had come to the end of the building. The stairwell was a wide set of steps rising up, littered with paper and covered in a layer of dust. Somewhere on the floor above us I could hear the soft scurry of vermin. They were in the walls, and on the floor were empty brass shell casings – the kind that came spewing from an automatic weapon. I looked over my shoulder, out through a broken window. There was glass all over the passageway floor and a rivulet of blood that dripped down from the frame of the window and puddled black on the floor.

  “Are you glad you stayed here at the school when the ‘Affliction’ swept through here?” I asked Jill.

  “Yes,” she said. “Firstly, as a teacher, I had a moral responsibility to my students, so I would never have left them. But I’m glad I wasn’t in my home when the news broke,” she admitted. “My home is close to the city. It wouldn’t have been as safe…”

  We went up the stairs, the sound of our scuffing feet inordinately loud in the empty cavern of the abandoned building. The air here was somehow thicker – the stench of rotting musty decay thick and cloying in the back of my throat, almost suffocating. Outside, the sun was somewhere high overhead, leaving the interior of the stairwell in dark shifting shadows.

  The second floor of the vast building was less strewn with rubble and litter. The classroom doors hung open, empty and abandoned. I could see overturned desks and chairs, a pair of left-behind running shoes and a cell phone in the first room. I hung in the doorway, reluctant to enter, trying to imagine the first terror-filled moments of pure panic.

  I turned and saw Jill over my shoulder. She was staring at something further along the passageway. She pointed. “My classroom is down that way,” she said in a detached voice. “That’s where I was when we heard about the ‘Affliction’.”

  “Show me,” I said.

  I followed Jill down the hallway until she stopped before an open door. She shuffled her feet, wrung her hands. Her face had turned pale so that her dark eyes appeared huge and haunted in her face.

  “This is it?”

  Jill nodded.

  I went through the door like I was entering a cemetery. My footfalls on the dust-covered ground were almost silent. It looked like an ordinary classroom, but somehow… somehow the horror and fear seemed to drip from the walls. There was a palpable sense that pervaded from every corner. It was intangible; beyond the broken desks and the overturned chairs – beyond the pictures hanging askew on the wall and the dripping stains of water damage.

  It was in the air.

  I turned to find Jill. She was still standing in the doorway; reluctant.

  “Tell me what happened here.” I asked, using the same voice of careful reason that a parent might use to call a child away from the edge of a busy road. “I just want to understand those few hours – from the time you found out about the ‘Affliction’ to when the Army arrived.”

  Jill’s eyes jerked to mine.

  “Please…” I said.

  She came through the door, into the classroom, and instinctively went towards her desk at the front of the room, trailing one finger across the dusty surface; somehow reconnecting with the space. Then she turned and folded her arms across her chest, as if the retelling required some kind of detached space… or maybe some sort of restraint and self-control.

  “There was an all call announcement that was heard throughout the building,” Jill said. “That’s how we first heard that cases of the ‘Affliction’ had been reported within just a few miles of the school. Usually the announcement is a recorded message, but on that day it was our Principal’s voice, ordering us to go into ‘lockdown’ mode and to wait for further announcements.”

  I wrote everything down that Jill told me, leaning on one of the classroom desks a student had once worked at, and then looked up into Jill’s eyes.

  “Do you remember what time the announcement came through?”

  “Towards the end of the school day,” Jill was vague. “Classes finished at 2:13 p.m., so it must have been before then,” she shrugged her shoulders and took a guess. “Probably around 1:30 p.m.”

  “And what were you doing at that moment – exactly?”

  “I was teaching my own class which has students with disabilities. I had eight students. The class is called English Lab and supports the kids in their English 9 class. We were getting ready to begin reading ‘Romeo and Juliet’ the next day…”

  “And…?”

  “I went straight to the window,” Jill pointed. The window was large and overlooked a main road. “That’s Pontiac Trail, down there. It’s the main road that runs through town.”

  “What did you see?”

  “Everything appeared normal in the foreground,” Jill said carefully. “Traffic was flowing in both directions, but further away there was a lot of smoke, the flash of lights through the haze… just those kind of eerie signs that put you on edge, you know?”

  I nodded.

  “It was nothing substantial or specific at that stage. There were no helicopters circling the school and no convoy of military vehicles charging to our rescue.”

  “But that is eventually what happened, right?”

  “Pretty much,” Jill agreed. “When the armed forces did come to our rescue, they came in numbers.”

  I wanted to pursue that line of questioning, but felt I might be getting ahead of myself. I backtracked the course of the conversation, asking Jill to take me through each step. She let out another long sigh of breath and came across to where I was standing at the window. We both looked down.

  The road, which had once run through the heart of the town like an artery, was now choked and clogged with the empty black carcasses of burned out vehicles. The tarmac was scarred with angry scorch and skid marks. Heavy metal guard railings lay broken from their pylons, twisted on the abandoned roadway like monstrous dead snakes, and downed power lines lay strung like slash marks. Two years ago, all hell had broken out here.

  “What happened when you heard the Principal’s announcement?” I asked Jill, still staring down below and swaying a little with vertigo.

  I hate heights…

  “When we get the announcement we have to lock down whether the intruder is outside our building or in our building. We have to scan the hallway for students to bring into the classroom to be safe, then shut the door and lock it.”

  “Is that all?”

  “No. We turn off the lights and then
put all the kids into a corner of the room so that they cannot be seen from the door’s window.”

  “And how did the kids in your class react to all the panic and confusion?”

  “Amazingly,” Jill shook her head with a kind of proud wonderment. “There was a lot of screaming and panic out along the hallway, but all the kids in my class were terrific. They stayed calm, kept their heads. Everything was very orderly.”

  “That must have been a relief.”

  “It was,” Jill said.

  I frowned again, playing in my mind all that Jill had told me, committing the important points to paper. “Did the Principal’s announcement actually mention the ‘Affliction’? I mean did you know at that moment what the lockdown was for?”

  “Not immediately,” Jill admitted. “Although I had guessed. About ten minutes after the first announcement there was another. The Principal explained why we were in lockdown and then said that a heavily armed convoy of military trucks and helicopters were on their way to begin an evacuation. Other Army units had been deployed in some kind of perimeter a few miles beyond the school.”

  “To fight the ‘Afflicted’?”

  Jill shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t know,” she said. “This area was a key battlefield during the outbreak, but I don’t know about this particular action. The Army might have been digging in to fight, and the evacuation was a coincidence… or they put up a defensive line in order to buy the school time to evacuate everyone. I prefer to think it was the latter…” her voice trailed off into an unsettled, open-ended silence.

  “Okay,” I said. I put down my notebook. “Now tell me about the evacuation itself,” I insisted. “Cast your mind back to that day and pick up the story for me from the moment you saw the armed columns of troops trundling towards the school, and heard the helicopters overhead. What was happening in your classroom at that time?”

  “I was initially going to go searching for a weapon – a knife… anything I could find from a kitchen or maybe the building engineer’s room. But when the second announcement was broadcast I forgot about the need to defend the students. From that moment on, my focus was on the relief column; how quickly they would arrive… how soon the kids could be airlifted or driven away to safety.”

  I flipped back through my notes quickly and widened my eyes. “You said there were over thirteen hundred kids in this building at any given time. That’s a massive evacuation.”

  “Yes,” Jill’s expression grew bleak, as if a passing cloud had cast her face in sudden dark shadow. “That’s what worried me…”

  There is a profound moment in most interviews. It’s that one comment or that one significant look. Sometimes it’s as subtle as a change of demeanor of a person’s tone that is the give away. This was that moment.

  “Explain. Please.”

  Jill stepped away from the window, hugging her shoulders, her head down on the litter-strewn ground as she picked her way carefully across the classroom floor. Her voice sounded like it was coming from a place far away.

  “I heard a report once about a group of men whose boat capsized and sank in the ocean,” she began telling an abstract story that had me confused. “They spent a full day and night in the water, waiting for rescue. But before that moment when the helicopter suddenly appeared, sharks had begun arriving in the area. The men saw the fins. The sharks began to circle the survivors. When the helicopter hovered overhead, they could only be lifted aboard to safety one at a time…” Jill’s voice drifted in and out, finally coming back stronger. “The survivors said that was the worst part of their ordeal. Not being in the water, not fearing drowning – it was the torture of waiting to be rescued while the sharks were circling.”

  I got it.

  “Was that how you felt?” I asked the question in a whisper.

  “Yes.” Jill’s face had become a mask of raw fear, ravaged by the memories that were now lapping over the break wall of her self-control. “We were on the second floor. I didn’t know if the helicopters would come and evacuate us from the rooftop… or if the trucks would arrive at the doors downstairs and evacuate the ground floor first. It was a nightmare. I knew the ‘Afflicted’ could come sweeping through the school at any moment. By the time the trucks were arriving on the school grounds there were helicopter gunships overhead. But above all that clamor, I could hear the far away sound of explosions, and from the window I could see columns of smoke erupting just a few miles away.”

  “What happened?”

  Jill let out a long shutter of breath and tried to smile. She blinked away unshed tears and sniffed. “The Army was very efficient,” she said. “There were hundreds of them, swarming up and down the corridors. I thought the helicopters were to airlift us out, but they weren’t; they were to support the perimeter the Army was defending. So we were evacuated downstairs – all the kids and teachers taken in long organized lines and put onto trucks. When the trucks were filled, we waited with our kids until other helicopters arrived. These were big transports. They landed on the school grounds and I led my students to the nearest one. There were soldiers on either side of us with their weapons drawn. The sound of the rotors was deafening, the wind of their downdraft adding to the chaos and confusion.”

  “But everyone was evacuated, right?”

  “Yes,” Jill said. “Every single student and teacher made it to safety before the Army pulled out of South Lyon, and the ‘Afflicted’ swept through destroying everything in their path.”

  It had been a monumental military effort – a massive evacuation in the face of a swarming enemy, and all – apparently – executed with remarkable precision and efficiency. In some quarters, the military leadership had been criticized in the aftermath of the contagion. Well here in Detroit, the armed forces had done themselves proud.

  Jill and I walked slowly back down the abandoned corridor, leaving the classroom and her hellish memories behind. On the way down the staircase it occurred to me suddenly that this young woman had lost everything in the Apocalypse. She had come to work and never had the time to retrieve even a keepsake from her home.

  “That’s not true,” Jill said with a wisp of a smile. “I had family photos and my father’s program in my classroom. It includes pictures of my niece and four nephews, a family photo and some other pictures that mean a lot to me.

  “My dad’s program was created by the funeral home. It’s very unique and has pictures of him from throughout his life…I have them still. They’re with me always.”

  I smiled a rare happy smile.

  Jill Blasy had proven herself calm and competent in the face of a crisis, and then endured the aftermath of those terrible days with steadfast resolve and a determination not to succumb to the fear that had infused us all.

  Her dad had been a legendary hockey and softball coach – instilling discipline and fortitude into the young men and women who were mentored by him. I felt sure the great man would have been proud of her.

  * * *

  Siloam Springs, Arkansas:

  The man standing by the chain wire fence looked at me suspiciously, and hefted the shovel he was holding in a thinly-veiled threat. He was a young guy, broad across the shoulders, his chest and forearms burned brown by the Arkansas sun. His face was dusted with grey concrete powder and his hands heavily calloused. He narrowed his eyes as I approached warily. When I was still twenty feet away, I waved a greeting and called out.

  “I’m here to meet Larry Phelps. Is he around?”

  “You mean Priest?”

  “Phelps,” I said again.

  “Who the fuck are you?” the young man was wary, bristling on the verge of open hostility. Behind the unfinished wire fence, I could see a cluster of other men and women talking with animated gestures in the middle of a quiet suburban street. None of the people were looking in our direction.

  “My name is Culver,” I said. “I’m a writer.”

  “Oh yeah?” the guy with the shovel seemed unimpressed. “Only writer I ever heard of was
Tom Clancy. Do you write like him?”

  “No. I’m a reporter.”

  The man seemed unimpressed. He glanced over his shoulder. The discussion in the middle of the road was becoming louder, and voices were raised. He looked back at me. “Wait here,” he said, and buried the blade of the spade into the earth at his feet.

  The guy turned and strode back to where the impromptu meeting was taking place. Heads turned in my direction. The guy pointed. From out of the group, a man in his forties or fifties came striding towards me with one hand extended and the hint of a welcoming smile showing through the grime and sweat that masked his face.

  “You’re Culver?” the man asked. He had thinning black hair and the scruff of a white beard and moustache that had been trimmed around his mouth. He snatched off his glasses and studied my face carefully.

  “Yes,” I said and shook hands.

  “You’re Larry Phelps?”

  “Yes.”

  I indicated the guy that had greeted me. “He called you Priest.”

  Larry smiled a little. “It’s a nickname,” he said. “Some people call me Priest because I performed wedding ceremonies at the Castle of Muskogee before the Apocalypse.”

  I nodded. Larry wiped the sweat from his brow on the sleeve of the t-shirt he was wearing. It was stained with dirt and several sizes too large for his frame. It hung from his shoulders like a voluminous tent. His pants were tied around his waist with a length of rope. I was curious. The other people on the street were better dressed although they too were grimy with the dirt of hard toil. Larry must have caught my puzzled expression.

  He held his arms wide, like he was offering himself up for inspection. “The clothes, right?”

  I nodded, wanting to be polite, but not really knowing how. “You look like a hobo,” I said as kindly as I could.

  Larry Phelps laughed.

  “I wear these like a badge of honor,” he said, lowering his voice a little. “Before the ‘Affliction’ swept across the country, I was a big man, Mr. Culver. Overweight. Now…”

  Now Larry Phelps was solid, the excess burned away by back-breaking work under the sun, and perhaps the mere deprivations of food supplies that were part of America’s struggle to survive. “These are my work clothes… and there is a lot of work to be done.”